


The Bottom Line

by scarletmanuka



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Blind Sheppard, Fluff and Humor, M/M, McKay's ass, Possessive Sheppard, The Ancient's idea of bathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 13:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19200253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletmanuka/pseuds/scarletmanuka
Summary: McKay's ass is a thing of wonder but Sheppard has never noticed. When their new teammate, Ronon, points it out, John finds that he can't stop noticing it.





	The Bottom Line

The thing about the Ancients was that, well, they were _ancient_. As technologically advanced as they'd been, especially when it came to the Stargate system and weapons, some of their notions felt rather antiquated to the Atlantean expedition. There was absolutely no doubt in Sheppard’s mind that humans were the second evolution spawned from the Ancients, especially when you compared the Romans or Greeks to the Ancients. The way that the Ancients dressed, the way that they spoke, even what the expedition had learned of their familial groups showed a direct correlation, but nothing more so than their bathing habits.

When the expedition from Earth made their one way trip through the ‘gate to Atlantis, they found a city full of wonders and technology that lit up every time John touched it, and that gave McKay the warm fuzzies. What they _didn’t_ find however, were showers. There was plumbing of course, and toilets, sinks, and even the Ancient equivalent of a bidet, but no showers. Instead, scattered across the city were public baths. They were luxurious and splendid, and they generally had floor to ceiling windows that offered bathers an ocean view, but they were designed for many people at once with little in the way of privacy.

The expedition team had numerous engineers and builders amongst them - you couldn’t explore an alien city with the good chance of never returning home without them - but building showers was quickly relegated down the list of priorities. When shields holding back the ocean were failing, space vampires were after their literal life force, and trading partners were scarce, the place where people washed away the blood and grime at the end of a long day wasn’t exactly up there in importance. The team were nothing if not adaptable and so the baths were split into male and female spaces and after the first handful of awkward times, bathing in the public baths became the norm.

Perhaps it was the years and years of military service, but Sheppard found that he had few inhibitions and he didn’t care much about being seen in his birthday suit. His view was that he didn't have anything that the others hadn’t seen before so why be ashamed? Some of the expedition, especially the civilian scientists, were more shy but Sheppard made the conscious effort to simply not look. He maintained eye contact and casual conversation with anyone who was bathing at the same time, ensuring that they felt comfortable that he wasn’t going to sneak a peek at their junk, and he found that almost everyone else adapted the same philosophy. He’d had to reprimand two marines who had tried to sneak into the female baths but luckily they’d been caught before they could violate anyone’s privacy. They became awfully familiar with the Lantean toilets as Sheppard put them on cleaning duty for two months straight.

Time passed and although they started to swim instead of just treading water in Pegasus (making several trade partners, fighting off the Genii, and holding their own mostly against the Wraith) there was always a more urgent project than building showers. Most of the living quarters had small ensuites with a toilet and sink, but the time it would take to upgrade the plumbing to add showers was too great, and adding private shower stalls in the areas of the public baths was also problematic. Using the public baths wasn’t killing anyone and by now everyone was closer than blood family so it didn’t even feel much like a violation of privacy. It had simply become the norm and Sheppard rarely thought about it.

Until Ronon Dex arrived.

Ronon slotted into their team with hardly a ripple. He was big and brash and shameless but he respected Sheppard as his Team Leader, had an immediate, deep connection with Teyla that could only come from the shared life experience of fighting the Wraith constantly, and he discovered that there was more to McKay than his snarky, sarcastic outer shell would suggest. In fact, he noticed something about McKay that Sheppard never had.

They’d gotten back from a run of the mill ‘meet and greet’ mission on a desert planet and besides getting caught in a dust storm, all had gone well. They arrived back, exhausted but happy, and very, very dirty. Elizabeth had asked for a brief overview and after deciding that the rest of the debrief could wait until morning, had sent them all off to clean up. Teyla had bid them goodnight and headed off to the women’s baths, and the others slowly trudged to the men’s baths, listening to McKay rant about all the different orifices that he had gotten sand in. They reached the baths and McKay peeled off, heading for a screened off area as he was want to go to to shed his clothes. Sheppard and Ronon simply dumped their towels on a bench and began stripping down, chatting idly about the meat they’d traded for. Ronon was in the middle of describing how tender the hind steaks were when he stopped mid sentence, his attention completely taken by something over Sheppard’s shoulder.

“What?” Sheppard asked, craning his neck around but not seeing anything out of the ordinary in the room, just McKay making his way to the water where two of the botanists were already bathing.

“I’ve never swung that way,” Ronon said, his eyes not having moved at all, “but I gotta say, that’s by far the best ass I’ve ever seen.”

“Huh?” Sheppard said eloquently.

Ronon finally pulled his gaze back to Sheppard’s face, one eyebrow quirked in amusement. “You’ve never looked, have you?” he guessed.

“Looked at what?”

“Man, you’re totally blind to it.”

“Blind to what?” Sheppard looked over again but all he saw was McKay fussing with his bottles of shampoo and body wash and the two botanists talking quietly to one another, neck deep in water.

“McKay’s ass!” Ronon hissed and waggled his eyebrows as he tilted his head in McKay’s direction.

“Huh?” Sheppard said again. Then, as if compelled by Ronon’s urging, his head turned back and his eyes dropped and then he saw it. “Holy fuck,” he whispered, and how the hell had he never noticed _that_ before?

Ronon hadn’t been exaggerating - McKay’s ass was a thing of wonder. The skin was milky and unblemished, pulling tight over two plump globes as he bent over to position his shampoo near the edge of the bath. Sheppard could feel his cheeks flush as he got the quickest glimpse of a pink, puckered hole, but he simply couldn’t look away. As McKay stood back up, Sheppard noticed two little dimples above the cheeks and he suddenly got the urge to lick them. Then McKay was making his way down the tiled steps into the bath and the pale blue water was swallowing up that delectable ass and Sheppard found himself feeling bereft.

“It’s the perfect shape to just grab in two hands and pound deep inside,” Ronon said, holding his hands out to mime grabbing McKay’s ass. While following his hands, Sheppard got a brief glimpse of Ronon’s cock, beginning to swell as he described what he’d do to McKay’s ass and a wave of possessiveness rolled over him.

“Hey, hey, that’s enough,” he barked in a harsh whisper. “That is your teammate and you will _not_ disrespect him like that.” He knew that he was being completely hypocritical since similar thoughts had flickered through his own mind, but fuck it - _do what I say, not as I do_.

Ronon held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “Woah, man, peace - I was just making an observation.”

Feeling irrationally angry at the runner, Sheppard couldn’t keep the scowl off of his face. “Well keep your observations to yourself next time.”

Ronon said nothing, just watched Sheppard for a long moment and he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ronon knew exactly what was going through Sheppard’s mind. He finally nodded once, and picked up the thread of their earlier conversation without missing a beat.

After that, Sheppard couldn’t help but continue to take notice of McKay’s ass.

They were getting ready for a mission when Teyla pointed out that McKay’s BDUs were rather loose. McKay grunted and muttered, “Yes, well all the running for my life that I do seems to outweigh the mediocre meals that they’ve been serving us recently.” Despite the gruff tone, he was blushing slightly and looked rather pleased. That lasted until they were once again running for their lives, a Wraith dart on their tail, when McKay’s trousers dropped from his waist, tangling his feet together and sending him sprawling in the dirt.

Sheppard paused to pull him to his feet, and at the time he hardly registered the cotton boxers, just hustled McKay towards the ‘gate where Teyla was dialing and Ronon was firing at the Dart with his blaster. McKay hoisted his pants up and held tight to them as they hurried forward and they disappeared through the event horizon by the skin of their teeth.

Once they were safely in Atlantis, Sheppard directed McKay to see the Quartermaster to be fitted with smaller BDUs, delivered his report to Elizabeth, had dinner (the meals definitely seemed smaller), and it wasn’t until he was just drifting off to sleep that he realised that his brain had taken the perfect snapshot of McKay’s ass, apparently so he could savour it later. Sheppard tried his best to push the memory from his mind, so his brain happily replaced that image with the one from the baths, and by then he was hard, aching, and damn confused. He ended up rubbing one out, simply so he could relax and go to sleep but afterwards he tossed and turned restlessly, guilt heavy in his gut at using his teammate for wank fodder.

The following day, bleary eyed and pale, Sheppard forced himself up at his regular time so he could meet Ronon for a run. The chill ocean air did wonders to clear his head and he had soon put all thoughts of McKay and his plush ass out of his mind - until he and Ronon hit the mess.

Lined up for coffee was McKay - in his brand new BDUs. His form fitting, new BDUs, and it was now insanely obvious how baggy the previous ones had been. The trousers, which weren’t exactly catwalk material, clung to McKay’s ass in all the right ways, even showing off his strong thighs. Sheppard knew that his eyes were bugging from his head but he simply couldn’t look away, too enraptured by the sight.

It was Ronon clearing his throat pointedly that pulled his attention back and he flushed at being called out by the very person he’d recently chastised for doing exactly that. “Fuck, sorry,” he apologised, knowing that he was coming across as an absolute jerk.

“Don’t even mention it,” Ronon said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I get it.”

That set his stomach roiling with some indecipherable emotion. Sheppard didn’t _want_ Ronon to ‘get it’. He wanted the runner, and everyone else - besides himself - to be oblivious to McKay’s ass. He couldn't say _why_ he felt this way, since he’d never before had an issue with anyone showing an interest in McKay, and he’d never even considered him in that light before. It must simply be a protective instinct, a perfectly natural thing for a Team Leader to do, especially when the team dynamic had so recently changed. He was just watching McKay’s back, that was all. No one could fault him for doing that.

After a week or so, the form fitting BDUs just became the norm and whatever odd fascination Sheppard had with them slowly faded. He still _looked_ , couldn’t seem to stop himself from looking, but he was able to put it from his mind quicker and quicker, making it less of a distraction. By the time they were spending a non-mission day exploring some of the empty labs on the east pier, everything was almost back to normal. Of course, that’s when the console that McKay was pulling apart, crystals and wires littering the floor around him, decided to explode.

McKay threw himself down onto the ground, twisting away as he did so, his arms coming up to protect his head. Sheppard hurried over from where he’d been poking into a cupboard across the room and winced as he saw McKay’s back embedded with shards of crystal, dark blood already soaking the material of his shirt.

Thanks to the transporters, the infirmary was only a short walk away and they stumbled inside, one of his arms under McKay’s shoulders, helping him in.

“What the bloody hell happened?” Beckett demanded, laying down the tablet he was looking at and hurrying over.

“Crystals overloaded with a power spike,” McKay explained through gritted teeth.

Beckett sighed and led him over to an examination table. “And here I was thinking that today would be a quiet day with neither of you away on a mission.”

“Hey, come on, doc - not _all_ of our missions end with us visiting you,” Sheppard protested as Beckett helped McKay lie down on his stomach.

The doc shot him an incredulous look and didn’t grace it with a response. Instead he picked up a pair of shears and began to cut away McKay’s shirt, avoiding the parts with crystal sticking through the material. “This is going to hurt, sorry,” he murmured to his patient, and peeled away half the unattached part of the material.

McKay gasped as the movement tugged at the parts that were still attached to him through the ex-control console, and Sheppard moved to the head of the table and placed a hand on his bicep. “So how’s your research going on developing a hyperdrive for the Jumpers?” he asked to distract him.

For once, McKay didn’t make a snarky or snide comment, just took it for what it was, and he explained about the roadblocks that he and Zelenka had come up against. He hissed when Beckett began plucking bits of crystal from his back with a pair of tweezers, small pieces of fabric coming away with them, and Sheppard’s eyes were drawn downwards to where Beckett was working - and then beyond. From his vantage point the swell of McKay’s ass rose from the dip in his spine, looking even more shapely than usual. Sheppard’s throat went dry and he found that he was unable to look away, especially when Beckett pulled out a bigger piece of crystal, making McKay flinch violently - which set his ass to jiggling.

“Sheppard? _Sheppard!”_ McKay snapped, and he finally looked away from the mesmerising sight.

“Huh?” he said, clearing his throat, trying not to look guilty.

“I said, we might need to reschedule tomorrow’s mission,” McKay said slowly, as if explaining to a child.

“Oh, yeah, probably.” Sheppard’s eyes flickered downwards against his will, falling on McKay’s ass once more.

“As morbidly fascinating as you may find it, _I_ find it rather disconcerting how much enjoyment you seem to be finding in watching pointy objects being pulled from my skin.”

He jerked his eyes away, apologising quickly, thankful that McKay couldn't tell what he was really looking at. “Sorry, my bad. Uh, so, you were saying, ‘bout the hyperdrive?”

Up until now, it had simply been looking, which was distracting enough as it was for Sheppard, but it was about to get so much worse.

“Quick, quick, in here!” Sheppard hissed at McKay and yanked open the door to a small storage cupboard. He stepped inside, twisting in the narrow space to see McKay running for the door before he turned around and backed inside so he could pull the door shut behind him, not a moment too soon. A snuffling noise came from outside, and then there was the sound of sharp claws on the shiny surface of the door. The giant pig type creature growled and then the whole cupboard rattled as it rammed the door. McKay yelped and jumped backwards - pressing his back flush against Sheppard’s front.

Leaning forward, Sheppard put his lips close to McKay’s ear and whispered, “Don’t make a noise.”

Choosing not to make one of his patented snappy retorts, McKay remained silent and they stood, frozen, listening to the space pig attempting to get to the tasty meat popsicles inside. Sheppard was going to _kill_ SGA7. Why the hell they had thought that it would be a good idea to bring one of these creatures back _alive_ was anyone’s guess. Sure, it _looked_ like it might taste like bacon but surely they could have found that out by bringing back a carcass. It’s not like the meat would go bad in the short time that it would take to come through the ‘gate.

McKay shifted and all thoughts of bloody revenge on SGA7 were wiped from Sheppard’s mind as he felt that plush ass push up against his groin. He stifled a groan and tried to surreptitiously shift away, given that certain parts of him were rather enjoying the sensation. The last thing that he needed was to give away the fact that he had a semi since that was almost guaranteed to send McKay into a tirade. The snuffling sound outside was getting fainter so the space pig must be moving away but the faintest noise would have it back in a second.

“Do you think it’s gone?” McKay hissed.

The shuffling noise got louder again and Sheppard reached up and wrapped his arm around McKay from behind, fitting his hand over his mouth to shut him the fuck up. It ensured the silence that they needed but it also brought their bodies flush together and he could feel how perfectly his cock nestled against the gap between McKay’s ass cheeks. He bit his lip hard enough to break the skin simply to stop the moan that was caught in his throat. The sharp flash of pain also discouraged him from getting hard but it was a close call.

The next twenty minutes were the longest of his life but eventually there was the sound of a blaster and Ronon whooping in glee and only then did Sheppard deem it safe enough to escape from their hidey hole. They tumbled out into the corridor, wincing at the bright lights, and Sheppard did his best to ignore the knowing smirk on Ronon’s face. He helped take the carcass to the kitchens and that night they dined on space pig (which did in fact taste like bacon), and once it was late enough, he escaped to his quarters. Pulling out his lube, he jerked himself off, panting as he came hard at the memory of what it felt like to be pressed up against the plump, delicious ass cheeks of McKay.

Sheppard didn't seem to have any luck in the weeks following that incident, always seeming to round a corner _just_ as McKay was bending over to tie his laces, or when he was shoulder deep in the housing of a console. Worst of all was when McKay had been half blinded by some weird pollen off world and he’d crawled around on the ground at Sheppard’s feet, groping for him blindly and managing to grope him properly as well. Running for the ‘gate with an erection wasn’t on Sheppard’s list of things to try again in a hurry. Things were getting bad, this crazy obsession was beginning to affect his work and something had to give.

It all came to a head when they were working on one of the stasis pods in the middle of the night, neither able to sleep. Something went wrong (inevitably) and after a small explosion, they found themselves covered in a weird lavender gel that smelled like anchovies. With matching looks of disgust on their faces, they made their way to the deserted public baths and stripped out of their clothes. The smell was so bad that McKay didn’t even bother to hide behind the privacy screen to undress, he did it right there with Sheppard.

Plunging into the water, Sheppard dove down, scrubbing furiously at his hair to get rid of the worst of the gel but when he surfaced, McKay wasn’t in the bath with him. He looked up to see him climbing out of the bath and made an enquiring grunt.

“Forgot my shampoo,” McKay muttered, and then walked over to his belongings. He could have crouched down in a squat to retrieve his shampoo but instead, he bent over at the waist, presenting his entire rear end for Sheppard’s viewing pleasure. His jaw dropped open in shock, but McKay appeared oblivious and ignored Sheppard entirely as he returned to the water and began to wash his hair.

Sheppard was rock hard beneath the surface of the water and his brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. The image of McKay, bent over, giving Sheppard a peak of not only his puckered hole but also of his balls, tucked between his thighs was playing on repeat in his mind. It was too much, and he couldn’t stop himself. He waded through the water to where McKay was standing with his back to Sheppard and he pressed himself firmly against his back, his hands settling on McKay’s hips to pull him back against him. “Fuck, McKay, do you have any idea how fucking nice your ass is? The things I want to do to you!”

McKay laughed and wriggled back against Sheppard, pressing his lower half even closer to him. “Took you bloody long enough to notice,” he said. “I was beginning to think that I’d have to actually fuck myself with a dildo in front of you for you to take the hint.”

“Wait, you were doing all of that _deliberately?”_ Sheppard demanded, shocked.

“Well, yes, of course! Did you think I put myself on display for just anyone?”

“You’d better not,” he growled, low and possessive.

McKay laughed again and he turned around in the water, linking his arms behind Sheppard’s neck and rubbing their hard cocks against one another. “It’s all yours, John. Now how about you take some time to examine what’s yours?”

Shepard grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” And he leaned in and kissed him, his hands dropping down to squeeze those delectable cheeks.

 


End file.
